By Sophie Albertie
I know nothing about ice skating, but I’ve watched Alyssa Liu win the gold medal for olympic figure skating about one million times.
The 20 year old Liu apparently returned to skating after a four year hiatus. Despite her gargantuan victories, she preaches self care, self regulation and trusting the process. She has managed to center skating without making it the center of her life. Something that I can imagine to be incredibly challenging for other olympians.
“I connect with everything but I’m not attached to anything,” Liu said.
An incredibly talented young woman with an ever promising future, the first public figure I can’t find anything wrong with to write about. The halo rings bleached into her hair represent the rings of a tree, and her selection of songs that she skates to highlight her knowledge of culture. She is wholeheartedly a trailblazer. A skater who has brought the most relevance to the sport of ice skating since two time ice skating olympian Johnny Weir.
So how do some people not like her?
The majority of Liu’s haters are about as relevant as fax machines, but the real issue is the root of why people are even taking to the internet in the first place. They comment on her politics, her use of the f-bomb after her iconic routine and even her piercings. Something that wouldn’t happen to a male athlete in a thousand lifetimes. There has also unfortunately been the rampant sexualization of her pictures and videos that cycle the internet; men tweeting about one particular photo of her sticking her tongue out.
The saddest thing about any negative attention this girl is getting is that it highlights the universal truth about human nature: there’s always something wrong. Oftentimes this applies directly to young women in the spotlight.
All this to say, if even the most polarizing, opinionated commentators and podcasters can get off of their high horses and tell their audience that they love Alyssa Liu because Liu loves America, you’re on the wrong side of the argument.
